


Stars In My Black And Blue Sky

by lovedsammy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 18:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17833766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovedsammy/pseuds/lovedsammy
Summary: Coda to 14.13. The events of the altered timeline leave a profound effect on Sam and Castiel, one that neither of them can seem to shake without reopening - and healing - old wounds.





	Stars In My Black And Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I know I’m not the only one that was horrified about the fight that prev!timeline!Cas had with Sam in 14.13, right? Castiel has never physically harmed Sam like that before, and it disturbed me quite a bit. I figured it might’ve bothered Sam, too, and that was the reason for that anxious look he had when Cas came into the bunker at the end of the episode. I used this scenario to bring up instances where Cas HAS hurt Sam by breaking his wall or when Lucifer used his body to hurt Sam, and how this event triggered some of those memories for Sam. Because one thing about PTSD that is common is sometimes things happen, and they can be either completely unrelated or semi-related to the previous trauma, and it can bring it all back. Sam’s behavior in this fic is a result of that. 
> 
> I also feel like it’s worth mentioning that some of these darker, self-deprecating thoughts are Sam’s, not mine. I disagree with how he views himself. But Sam has a habit of keeping his emotions inside, and trying to placate others when it comes to them. He brushes it off with “the problem’s me”; he’s said before, and that’s the tone I went with in this fic. Sam’s come a long way from his s5 self-blame days, but he still tends to make issues be his problem vs others who want to help him. That’s what people who’ve experienced PTSD and Depression do (I’m guilty of it), and it’s a very real mindset I wanted to address.

Sam’s barely had a moment to gather himself, to try to slow the tremors in his still shaking hands, when he hears the bunker’s metallic door open. His mother and Dean, both blotchy-faced and red-eyed, exchange a quick glance with each other, and then at Sam. And as if on instinct, as though they are all thinking the same thought, they head into the main room. Sam’s heart lurches, and he tells himself not to cling to any half-hopes. They’d just seen John disappear minutes ago, and the temporal paradox should have corrected itself with him returning to the past. But maybe something went wrong, Sam reasons. Maybe it was already too late to change things back. And maybe, some selfish part of him hopes, they could really have Dad back for good. Maybe the universe, maybe God, was finally giving them a win for all that they’d sacrificed, maybe…

A whirlwind of beige and a flash of dark hair appears from behind the door, coming to a stop at the guard rail. It’s not John, but Cas. The presence of the angel was usually one that, for Sam, bestowed upon him a sense of peace and calming. He was his best friend, his family. A constant, gentle wave that always kept him afloat above the surface when Sam otherwise would’ve drowned. All of those long days and nights without Dean, stretching on into weeks and months…. Cas was the only other person besides his mother that Sam could remember being by his side for almost the entire time. Cas always had his back, and apart from Dean, he was the only other person to be involved in Sam’s life for as long as he had.

But instead of being a welcome sight, Sam finds that this time… he isn’t. And it takes him a moment to figure out why. It isn’t that he’d been wishing for his father instead; it’s something else entirely.

His body still aches from the earlier altercation with the angel - or the previous version of him, anyway, well before Cas had met him and Dean. But even with knowing the difference between the two, Sam can’t help the shudder of discomfort that radiates down his frame, and he is only half-aware of acclaiming a defensive stance, his expression wary.

“Mary. Sam, Dean,” Cas greets them, his eyes roving over each of them pleasantly, and displaying a softness that had been absent in the other Castiel. Nevertheless, Sam’s guard stays up, palms clammy at his side. He flexes his fingers, whether or not it’s to reach for an angel blade for protection or just out of nervousness, he’s not sure. Because if he looks hard enough, he can see that version of Cas still, and if he looks even harder… he can almost see Lucifer.

Castiel notices, because of course he does. His angelic powers could surely pick up on the mood of the room. It’s not just Sam that’s feeling apprehensive at his arrival, but Dean and Mary as well. Yet, Cas’s fixation lingers on Sam, his brows furrowing worriedly.

“What happened?” He asks.

“What happened,” Sam scoffs, and God, he feels so emotionally drained, still reeling from it all, that he can’t quite bring himself to speak. He looks to his brother for explanation, and he’s so damn grateful that Dean knows him so well, knows when Sam has reached his limit.

“Well, there’s a story,” Dean says. “Come on, let’s go talk in the kitchen. Where’s Jack?”

Cas gestures over his shoulder. “He’s getting our things from the trunk.”

“I’ll go help him,” Mary says hurriedly, and she brushes past her sons, giving each of them a gentle, comforting caress as she does. And Sam doesn’t know how she does it. How she can comfort them, her children, when she’s just lost the love of her life. How she could be so strong for them when she was coming apart at the seams herself. They were supposed to be the ones comforting her right now. It wasn’t the first time they’d lost Dad. For her, it was.

“Come on, Sammy,” Dean’s hand on his shoulder pulls Sam from this thoughts, and he nods, realizing that Cas has joined them at the base of the stairs. He can feel the angel’s gaze on his back, but he doesn’t make any attempt to address him.

A few minutes later, Jack and Mary come find them sitting at the table in the kitchen, and the boy is just as concerned as Cas is about what transpired. He asks Sam outright, but Sam only shakes his head, not meeting anyone’s eyes. He wants to comfort Jack, to assure the kid that it was okay, that nothing was wrong, but he can’t. And he thinks that must make him a failure of a co-parent. All of this time, through everything that had happened, Sam had been strong enough to console Jack, to be there for him and encourage him. But right now it was like all of that strength that he’d somehow managed to conjure up through the past few months had all been drained out of him, leaving him fragile and withering, weakened.

Sam had thought he’d reached his breaking point the night with Dean outside the hospital after Donatello’s recovery, when he’d launched his fist into his brother’s face and clutched onto the back of his jacket in Dean’s arms. But it was just a precursor to this. He’s cried more in the past six months than he’d cried in his entire life, it seemed.

They remain there for a long, long time, well into the night.

It’s Dean who does most of the talking. Sam manages to chime in every once in a while, and Mary does so even less than her sons. When Sam does muster the courage to look at her, his mother’s expression is distant, faraway, reliving the past twelve hours. She holds on to her can of beer as gingerly as if she were still clutching onto John’s hand, afraid for the moment that she’ll have to let go. It’s a painful realization, that he and his mother were alike in that way, that they both tended to close off when dealing with things that hurt them.

At a quarter past two, Mary retreats back to her bedroom. Probably to cry her eyes out, Sam thinks. He’s not confident that he won’t do the same. Part of him wants to get up and escape back to his room, too, but he quells the urge down. He doesn’t think he’d be able to sleep, anyway. He’d only lie awake with his thoughts, the desires and regrets, especially of his father. But more than likely it would be the other, much darker corners of his mind, the thoughts that he was barely avoiding to succumbing to, that would haunt him. And he was going to put off facing those as long as he could. So he stays, finding some solace in being among his friends and family. Even with how conflicted he was feeling about being near Cas, it paled in comparison to the pain that he’d feel of being alone.

He reminds himself that this Cas,  _their Cas_ , has never done what the other version of him had done. He didn’t deserve the blame that Sam was indirectly casting at him. The angel had healed, protected, and safeguarded him, almost from the moment they’d met. Castiel had fought off Lucifer to keep Sam safe, and even his own brethren at times. So, Sam’s issues - they were his own, and he didn’t need to drag Cas into them.   

“Your father,” Castiel murmurs around his bottle of beer, awestruck. “I still can’t believe it. I wish I’d been here. I’d have liked to have met him.”

Dean snorts, getting up to toss out the empty beer cans. “Oh, yeah, buddy, believe me, I wish it’d been you, too. Not the asshat version of you with that dickbag Zachariah. You really were Heaven’s soldier. He tells you to kill, and damn, man, you listened.”

At the mention of the other Cas, Sam stiffens, clenching his jaw. “Dean -” He cuts in, warningly. But he must go unheard, because the angel speaks at the same time.

“What version of me?” Cas inquires, tilting his head. “Was there more to it than your father showing up? You said the timeline had changed, but… me and Zachariah…?”

Jack’s curiosity is once again piqued, as it had the entire time they had been explaining what happened. “Wait. Who’s Zachariah?”

Dean waves a hand absently. “Ah, he was just some jackass head honcho angel that we killed who wanted us to start the Apocalypse and really had it out for us. He was Cas’s boss. Anyway, uh, yeah…. I’m guessin’ time was trying to fix itself, like Sam said. You and Zach showed up to try and fix it, found out it was us, and tried to kill us. Almost did, too.”   

“ _Kill you?_ ” Cas demands, incredulous, and for a second, the angel catches Sam’s eye, and it all seems to click in place. “That’s where all of those cuts and bruises on the two of you are from. I did that to you. I… I’m so sorry, I -”

Dean gives a one-shouldered shrug, finishing off his beer with one swig. “Nah. Hey, man, no hard feelings. You had a stick up your ass back then. It isn’t the first time you’ve beat the hell outta me. Besides, you’ve changed for the better, all right?” He reaches over to pat Sam’s face gently, and Sam soaks it up, amazed that even after all of these years, his big brother’s touch can still soothe him so easily. “Anyway, I’m gonna call it. ‘Night, Sammy. You know where I am if you need me.”

“Yeah. Night, Dean.”

He watches his brother leave, mouth going dry, and chugs the rest of his now warm beer. It burns the back of his throat, and he forcibly clears it. He wants to try and make conversation with Jack and Cas, but without Dean and his mother here, he suddenly feels exposed. Maybe he just needed the night to cool off, to reign in this state of panic he seemed to be in, and get a handle on it. That usually did the trick. If he managed to get some rest, he’d be good again in the morning. And he’d be able to brush off this - whatever this reaction was to his friend, and Castiel would be better off for it.

“You know, I, uh…” Sam says after a long moment, “I should… I should probably go to bed, too.” He flicks them a strained smile, and clamors to his feet. They’d gone slightly numb from sitting for so long. “Sorry if I… um, see you in the morning.”

Maybe tomorrow he wouldn’t feel so weird, so raw, and like something had broken in him. He gets to the doorway before Jack’s voice sounds from behind him, sad and desperate.

“Sam, wait,” The boy calls, and it makes Sam pause. Sam hates that it does. He can’t refuse the kid anything, even if it was at the expense of himself.  “Sam… are you all right? I’m worried about you. Please… just tell me if you’re not okay. Tell me how I can help.”

The question makes Sam open and close his mouth several times, and he surprises himself when he answers,  “I… I don’t know, Jack. I don’t… ”

He feels lost, in a haze, and it has nothing to do with the alcohol. He just stands there, staring at the floor, for what feels like an infinitely long time, in pregnant silence with nothing but the ticking of the clock. For a second, he wonders if he’s dissociating again, like during his post-wall days, unsure if Cas and Jack are even there, and resists the urge to finger the scar on his palm. This was real.

“Jack, can you give a moment to talk to Sam?” Castiel implores the nephilim after the pause, but his eyes are on Sam, who finally meets Castiel’s gaze guiltily, shamefully. Jack appears hesitant, his eyes glossed over and sorrowed, but a nod from Sam encourages him, and he leaves the two of them alone.

Sam wants to say something. Anything. “Cas - ” He tries.

“Sam… it’s not just what happened with your father that’s bothering you, is it? It’s much more than that.” Castiel appraises the younger Winchester, his features pained. “It’s about what happened in the alternate timeline. With the other me.”

Sam stiffly nods. “Yeah,” He says, hoarsely. There was no point in being dishonest, not when Cas could already tell that something was going on with him.

Cas knowingly returns the gesture. “I understand. I hurt you, and I tried to kill you, as well as Dean.”

“Yeah. Well, not you-you,” Sam quickly amends, because damn it all if he was going to let Cas carry the burden for this. “It was the you before you met us. Or, from another dimension or something. But it wasn’t  _you_. And that’s… that’s something that I need to keep telling myself, because it’s so damn stupid that I can’t seem to stop myself from - from reacting like this. It’s not your fault that I can’t deal with my own bullshit.”

“Don’t,” Cas interjects sternly. “Don’t you dare turn this on yourself. Whatever it is that you’re feeling, whatever it is that you need to express, do it. If you need to hurt me back, do it.”

Sam pales, stunned. How could Cas even suggest that? “Cas, I couldn’t… I couldn’t do that to you, man. I’m not gonna hurt you just to make myself feel better. In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never hurt me, so why would I -”

“Now we both know that’s not true,” Castiel disagrees kindly. “I may not have splintered your bones or drawn your blood, but I’m no less guilty of hurting you than that version of me had. I tore down your wall and made you relive the horrors of the cage, and experience all of that suffering all over again.”

The admission makes Sam’s chest clench in remembrance. He practically chokes out, “Cas, I… I’ve forgiven you for that. You know that. It’s not the same thing.”

Castiel sighs. “Yes, maybe you have. Even when you shouldn’t have, you have. But what about how I hurt you when I let Lucifer possess me, and he drove his fist -  _my fist_  - into your chest cavity? Was that not a horrible violation to you?”

“Yeah, but you saved me,” Sam answers, readily. “You fought back, you took control, and you stopped him.”

Castiel takes a couple of steps towards him, and Sam has to fight the urge to flinch. “Sam... let me ask you… right now, do you see me? The other me? Or do you still, at times, see Lucifer?”

The question is still spoken in that soft, empathetic tone that Cas has used so many times with him, and yet it leaves Sam breathless. At his reaction, Castiel continues.

“You’ve experienced a great deal of trauma, Sam, and some of it has been at my hand. I am truly sorry for that. This was yet another instance. You need time to process it, and hopefully come to terms with it and be even stronger for it. But that isn’t something you can make yourself do over night. And you never need to feel sorry for reacting to something that has affected you, especially if it involves me.”

Sam’s vision blurs with wetness, and he quickly swipes at his eyes and exhales hollowly. “I thought I was past it. Or at least the worst of it. After Lucifer died, and I confronted Nick, I thought… I thought maybe the fear wouldn’t be as bad, you know? That maybe all that he’d done would just leave like he did.”

“Often, a completely unrelated - or even related - event can trigger a fear response to a situation,” Castiel tells him gently. “The human mind is incredibly resilient, but also very fragile if it’s hurt enough. Your strength amazes me everyday, Sam, but even the strongest people have their breaking point. With everything that has happened recently with Dean, and your father, and now this. It’s no surprise that your mind and body are reacting this way. It takes its toll.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. Castiel understands, and that was all that he needed from him.

The angel finally approaches Sam further, and this time, Sam doesn’t flinch away. “I am truly sorry for what happened, Sam. I’m sorry that I hurt you, no matter which version of me it ended up being. I’m sorry for this - and all the other times.”

The younger Winchester feels a weight lift off of him. Not enough, but a bit. “It’s okay, Cas. I don’t blame you. Not really. I forgive you. I just… you needed to know, I guess. But… don’t feel guilty about it, okay? I’m glad, so glad, that despite what happened, despite Dad, and everything… that you’re who you are now. Like Dean said: you’ve grown. You’ve changed. And man, even… even with who you were back then. It wasn’t bad then, either. You weren’t. It was the situation, just like this time.”

“And the reasons for those changes are down the hall and standing right here in front of me,” Castiel smiles. “You and Dean, and now Jack - you’ve made me who I am. You saw it. I was just another, obedient, mindless soldier who had very little regard for my father’s creation. I was merely emulating what my brothers and sisters believed, and did what my superiors directed. Heaven is my family, Sam, but it’s not my only family. And while on the subject of family… I am so glad that you were able to speak with your father. I know you’ve wanted that for so long.”

“Me too,” Sam croaks. “We said some things that, uh… needed to be said. For years. I feel like we finally understood each other. And I feel…” He considers. “I feel lighter, when I think about him, you know? Like some part of me has finally healed.”

“You got closure.”

“Yeah. Closure.”

“Sam. May I?”

The question is readable on Castiel’s face, and after a few seconds, Sam closes his eyes in assent. The fingers that tickel his forehead are warm and so is the grace as it flows through him, leaving his skin unblemished and no longer painful, healing.

Sam feels himself start to relax for the first time that day.

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” Castiel asks.

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. I can try.”

The angel nods. “All right. In that case, I’ll go talk to Jack. He’s probably still worried.”

“Let him know that I’m okay,” Sam says. “And that… tomorrow, I’ll talk to him. I’ll tell him everything. It’s time that he knew.”

He knows by the look on Castiel’s face that he understands what Sam means, and that it wasn’t just what transpired over the past day, but a lifetime of events that lead up to this. His friend jerks his head in response. 

“In that case, I’ll leave you to your rest. Good night, Sam. If you need anything… just let me know.”

“‘Course,” Sam smiles, and this time, it’s genuine. “Night, Cas.”

He heads to his bed room, shaking his head with amusement at the sound of deep-rumbling snores coming from Dean’s room, and plants face first down onto his bed. He falls asleep within minutes, and there are no nightmares that night to plague him.  


End file.
